Records Come Tumbling Down

C. Ronaldo is now the highest goal scorer for Real in the history of La Liga, having surpassed Raul. Raul probably is one of the greatest strikers in the game and Ronaldo went passed him without breaking a sweat! It took Raul 550 games over 16years to accumulate 228 goals. Ronaldo scored more in half the number of games.

Simply staggering. Messi scores at a similar rate in Spain and they both keep breaking some sort of goal scoring record every other week. Which begs the question, are Ronaldo and Messi twice as good as the greats of the previous generation?

Both Cristiano and Leo have better goal to game ratios than Henry, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ronaldinho and everybody else. Not marginally better, the difference is substantial.

Why do both of them score SO many goals?

The seemingly obvious answer that “They are better than anybody else ever was” just doesn’t satisfy my curiosity. I can think of a couple of other factors that might’ve contributed to their success.

Football today isn’t what it was a decade and a half ago. Good defenders are hard to find, tough tackling robust players even more so. Football is no longer a contact sport. Defenders don’t have the license to practise the dark arts of their trade as they did in the past. Every other tackle is deemed a book able offence. This makes it harder to stop TOP players.

A lot is being done to “protect” skilful attackers. Perhaps something needs to be done to protect the art of defending as well.

Courtesy of Barcelona’s dominance in the past decade and their fashionable style of football, other teams I believe feel obligated to try and adopt a similar style. Everybody wants their team to play attacking ‘total football’. Defensive sides are frowned upon and named “boring.”

Sometimes I think certain clubs would rather lose playing pretty football than win by being boring.

I know it’s the choice of every football club, but this elitist mentality has forced certain teams to neglect the defensive side of the game.

So the aforementioned drop in defensive standards has probably got something to do with modern day über offensive tactics as well.

Both, Real and Barca have built their teams around Ronaldo and Messi. The team is designed to get the best out of them, to suit their style. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. You would obviously design a system that makes you win more matches and THAT most of the times is the same system that is best suited to your team’s top goal getter.

With the quality of players both these teams have at their disposal, it shouldn’t be totally surprising that they score astronomically high number of goals.

I’m going to be the first to admit that these points aren’t entirely accurate when you look at each one of them in isolation. But if you combine the 3 together, they give more validity to each other.

Let us know what you think is the reason behind their mind boggling goal scoring records. Is it just their talent? Or is there something more?